Summary of Farewell My concubine: National Myth and City Memories

1. Main points 

Most of the existing critical response accused the film Farewell My Concubine of showing a “patronizing national allegory”[1], however, the author of this essay, Yomi Braester argues that there is “more intimate associations of the film’s locations and themes”[1], according to which, all of the intimate objects, bodily scars and perhaps most importantly urban spaces” resist “the myths of the Chinese nation state” Farewell is not just a usual film, but also concerns about politics and history, a ‘hegemonic cinema’[3].

2. Evidence and method

2.1. Personal memory and urban settings

Farewell foreshadows the ‘Sixth Generation’, where the spaces of personal memory is urban settings. It is a fantastic national epic as well as intimate urban vignettes. There are mainly two sequences opening Farewell. Firstly, it is presented before the credits, there are two Beijing opera actors walking into a sports hall. In this scene, you can see the relationship between personal memories and larger historical narratives. And for the second sequence, it shows ‘Beijing, 1924. The warlord Era’ .The first sequence shows a story of two actors in the background of unstable politics, and the second presents the staffs and power changing in the dusty alleys of the Beijing in old days.

2.2. The links between Beijing’s architectural symbolism and politic

In the film, there are not much landmarks, the things presented mostly are enclosed courtyards and opera houses. Through the demonstration of everyday life in Beijing’s alleys, Chen shows the extraordinary operatic and political spectacles. There is a case that shows the architectural symbolism stressing the theme about the overlap of operatic spectacle and political struggles. In the film, private spaces is the symbolism of the courtyards during the Cultural Revolution, there are big conflicts between Dieyi’s adopted son and him, when the street and the courtyard represent two separate viewpoints. The difference between the small courtyard and the large barren public fore grounds represents the difference between personal and the nation.

2.3. Personal memory and the frame of the film

According to Chen Kaige’s won words, the film concerns with his own growing up experience in siheyuan. ‘When shooting Farewell I felt an unknown force taking hold of me’ he recalls, ‘I believe that I put into the film all by my understanding of Beijing and all that old Beijing left in me. After the shoot, I dreamed that Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi was bidding me farewell, I wept in my dream’[2]. It shows Chen’s view about the Cultural Revolution, the dynamics of mob persecution leads to the victims to betray themselves as well as the betrayal of memory itself.

3. The greater significance

The author’s essay is different from the most of the existing critical response, which criticizes the film of showing a ‘patronizing national allegory’. Yomi Braester pays attention to the memory of politics in Chinese cinema. He declares that Chen’s film foreshadows the ‘Sixth Generation’ film makes, which the background of personal memory is urban settings.

  Works cited list
1. Yomi Braester, “Farewell My Concubine: National Myth and Memories”, British Film Institute, 2003
2. Chen Kaige, ‘Sometimes Growing Up Takes Only an Instant’, in “The Fifth Generation” in the 90s, Beijing Guangbo Xueyuan Chbanshe, 2000), 251-260.
3. Yar See, “The Hegemon’s Film”(Bawang dianying), Sing Tal Evening News, 11 December 1993, quoted in Lau



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